


To The Future

by WritinRedhead



Category: The Shape of Water (2017)
Genre: Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Implied Attraction, Just let Dimitri be alive please, M/M, Mentions of Blood, Right After The Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-06 06:10:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14050632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritinRedhead/pseuds/WritinRedhead
Summary: The morning after Elisa left, Giles Dupont finds a stranger in her otherwise empty apartment. A bleeding stranger.But he isn’t a complete stranger, not really.Giles patches him up and they talk.





	To The Future

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows/gifts).



> A huge thank you to [ rogueshadows](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rogueshadows) for her betaing and great additions. Thanks so much, friend.

On the morning of the eleventh of October, 1962, Giles Dupont heard a noise in the apartment next to this. The apartment belonging to Elisa Esposito.

Which was unsettling, because Elisa Esposito had left the previous night. Carried away in the arms of who the thick, leather-bound books on Giles' shelf would have called her fairytale prince. Even if their pairing was a bit unorthodox, even by the storybook standards.

Assuming no burglar was stupid enough to hope to find any hidden treasures in their shabby building, the apartment, by all means, should have been empty.

But the creaking of the wooden staircase, the limping footsteps, the opening of his friend's door and the low, pained groaning said otherwise.

When Giles carefully opened the door a minute later, armed with a large umbrella, he found a strange man sitting in a chair next to the table. A strange,  _bleeding_ man.

The man's shirt was blood-soaked at his lower abdomen and right shoulder. He looked when the door slowly creaked closed again. His dark hair was slicked back, but several strands had come loose, sticking to the dried blood that came from a nasty gash on his right cheek.

Despite the worryingly amount of blood and the cracked glasses, Giles recognized the face of the man. That night, the night they'd saved Elisa's prince in the facility, he had stopped the guard from putting a bullet between Giles' eyes.

Giles took that as a point in the bleeding man's favor.

"Elisa, she's gone... But I have a first aid kit in my apartment," Giles heard himself say. "Never used it much. Only for kitchen accidents."

The words just came out without thinking about them. It was weird. Shouldn't he be more shocked about this? Or at least surprised? But considering that less than six hours ago, he'd seen a fish man tear out someone's throat, there probably wasn't much left to surprise him.

He offered a hand to the man, who nodded, thankfully accepting the unspoken offer. With small, careful steps, getting down the hallway was easier than expected.

"After I nearly lost a fingertip, Elisa banned me from cooking. I wasn't good at it anyway. I'm rambling, aren't I? Sorry, haven't had that many strange, bleeding men in my apartment yet. This is the first time, actually. I don't even know your name."

The man, still bleeding, didn't answer right away and it made Giles wonder whether he was going to take his last breath on Gile's ragged old doormat.

With Giles' help, the man sat down on the couch, leaning his head back and breathing through clenched teeth. A bit of fresher red blood trickled from the dark spot low on the man's stomach, soaking into the upholstery of Giles couch.

The couch was old anyway, a remnant from whoever had lived here before him, like so many others. The only thing that had come with Giles, were his books. His books and his canvas.

"Bob Hoffstetler," the bleeding man suddenly said. "Dr. Robert Hoffstetler," he corrected, the disdain audible even through his pain. "Always hated it. Please… It's  _Dimitri."_

The name surprised Giles. He hadn't noticed any accent in the man's English and it was the first time in a very long time that he heard a Russian name that hadn't come out of a news reporter's mouth when he wasn't quick enough switching the channel. He didn't say any of that, though.

"Call me Giles, then."

Dimitri nodded, still looking pale and bloody on the couch, so Giles went over into his rarely used kitchen to dig out the first aid kit from a dusty corn of his kitchen shelf. There were fingerprints in the dust from when Elisa had last treated his arm. Compared to Dimitri's injuries, his scratches had been downright laughable.

He set the small case down on the low living room table, opening it and taking out a bottle of Iodine, compresses, a pair of tweezers as well as some swabs.

"If I may ask, what brought you here, of all places?"

Getting up the two flights of stairs of the old theatre building must have put an enormous strain on Dimitri's body. Not to mention Giles had no idea where he'd been shot in the first place.

"Was the only one I could think of. They... know my address, couldn't go back."

Giles didn't know who  _'they'_ were, but after the last few days, he'd had enough excitement and learned about more mysteries than he liked. He decided it was best not to ask.

Instead he went over to his cabinet, grabbed the bottle of old whiskey reserved for birthdays, Christmas, and declined pieces, as well two glasses. He set them down on the table next to the kit, sitting down carefully not to jostle the man's injuries.

He poured a finger's breadth into both glasses and handed one to Dimitri, together with a painkiller from the kit.

"Here. This might hurt a bit."

"An understatement, really," Dimitri said, swallowing down the pill with a gulp of whiskey, hissing at its burn. "You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette for me, too, would you?"

"I'm afraid not. I don't smoke. Not good for your health, they say."

Dimitri motioned to the left side of his body, trying to quell an uprising huff of laughter. "I doubt it could do any worse than this."

Giles chuckled. "Maybe not. But they might kill you slower."

Some gallows humor they had there.

Giles started cutting away the shirt where the bullets had ripped through Dimitri's body, carefully disinfecting and cleaning the wounds. The doctor flinched when the swab trenched in alcohol made first contact with his skin and a curse escaped him, but otherwise he held still and let Giles proceed with his clumsy patching up. He was an artist, not a nurse.

Dimitri didn't complain, biting back a grimace as he watched Giles work.

"Hold this, please." Dmitri obediently held the end of a bandage with this good hand, while Giles cut it off, securing it. He was still too pale, worryingly so, but there was nothing more Giles could do.

"Lemon pie," Giles said into the silence after he was finished.

"Sorry, what?"

"Lemon pie," he repeated. "That's my vice. Not good for me, and yet I kept coming back again and again. Thinking about it, I'd probably be better off with cigarettes. But, what's the saying, a leopard can't change its spots."

In truth, Giles didn't even like lemon flavor. Never had.

He supposed there was a symbolism to it now though, the possibilities that had been stamped out in a single foolish touch at the diner. Dimitri didn't remark on the strange tangent, probably too caught up in his pain to care about much of anything Giles was saying.

"What happened to Strickland?" Dimitri asked, once Giles finished bandaging the last wound. He should see a proper doctor, but with what Giles assumed about him, his own handiwork would have to do.

A word Giles didn't know followed after the name, but by the tone and disgusted expression on Dimitri's face he got the gist. Giles determined it to be a choice Russian curse insulting Strickland's family line, right down to his grandmother's mother's dog.

"Some might say it was justice that happened," he answered, "reaping what you sow and all that. But in the end it was him who ended it, the god that eats cats."

Dimitri cocked his head and raised his eyebrows. A silent manner of asking without straining his injured cheek.

"He ate Pandora," Giles explained, vaguely motioning at the two remaining cats. They seemed disturbingly fine without Pandora. He wondered whether they'd ever miss him if something happened. They'd probably miss Elisa more.

"I'm sorry," Dimitri said. "About your cat."

The cats apparently noticed that they had been spoken of, for one jumped up on the spot besides Dimitri and curled up where Elisa used to sit. After a moment, the tabby started to purr. He wondered whether she knew how he'd hate for the place to be empty.

The painkillers seemed to start taking effect, as the pained expression on Dimitri's face smoothed out. He even reached out to slowly pet Athena's head. The cat pushed into his hand, a low rumble coming from her chest. She usually didn't like anyone.

Now that he wasn't bleeding out, Giles couldn't help but notice Dimitri's looks. He was handsome in a way, if not in a leading man sort of way. Giles' fingers itched for his charcoal and sketchbook but it wasn't the time nor place. The thoughts couldn't lead anywhere, just like so many of Giles' crushes, so he said nothing.

"You know who I am, right?" Dimitri asked after a while. His voice was quiet and he kept his eyes on the purring tabby. "I told you my name, you must know where I'm from…" The exhaustion caused a faint, slightly rough sounding accent to slip into Dimitri's voice. His hand stilled and he turned toward Giles. "Why are you helping me? You could be tried for treason."

Giles raised his own glass of whiskey to his lips, swirled the amber liquid once before taking a swallow. He'd been trying not to think of the consequences. Fraternizing with a Soviet was an even quicker way to get yourself in front of a firing squad than breaking into a government facility.

There were many answers he could offer, that they were both outsiders in a way, that he just couldn't let someone die in front of him, that he owed him this much.

"Let me tell you something," Giles said instead. "Three years ago, we had an awfully wet winter, no snow, no ice, just rain for days. And one night, there was this girl in the hallway, standing there, soaking wet with an equally wet suitcase, and fumbling with her key. I helped her with the suitcase, invited her in and made her a cup of tea."

Giles packed away what had spilled out of the first aid kit, put the unused bandages back in and collected the blood dirtied swabs. The angry red disappeared in the bin below the sink.

"Over the years, I got to know her and she got to know me, all of me, and she never judged me. Just accepted me as the stubborn old fool that I am. She was the only one I could talk to. My only friend besides my cats and you helped her. You helped her with what she loved."

He sat down again and took hold of his drink. The whiskey rippled in small waves as he swayed the glass. It reminded him of a tiny golden sea. Beautiful, but confined.

"I like to believe she's now found a world she fits into," he said thoughtfully. "One that she gets to be free in."

Without another word, Giles topped up their drinks, then held his out toward Dimitri.

Dimitri nodded in understanding, the barest hint of a smile playing at his lips. Giles knew he probably shouldn't care but couldn't help but hope the man really would be okay.

Their glasses clinked with a quiet but sharp sound, shortly echoing through the apartment before being swallowed by the many books.

"To finding the right world," Dimitri said.

"To a better future."

 


End file.
